my, how the times have changed!
from the USA's # 1 father and moral exemplar to jail bird:
Sometimes it takes years for a person's "true colours" to emerge!
Is the world starting to turn against Bill Cosby?
- Thread starter Locutus
- Start date
Sometimes it takes years for a person's "true colours" to emerge!
Dr Phil show tomorrow will have a segment on these accusations:
Dr. Phil.com
I assume he will give Cosby equal time and look forward to its disclosures.
Dr. Phil.com
I assume he will give Cosby equal time and look forward to its disclosures.
I watched today's program and some commentators said they were willing to go to court and allow Cosby to defend himself before an impartial jury. It will be interesting to see if a court will allow standing to any claimant as the statutory period has expired and there does not appear any physical evidence.
We shall see how it all transpires ...
We shall see how it all transpires ...
Cosby Team’s Strategy: Hush Accusers, Insult Them, Blame the Media
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/a...on®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
In 2005, when Tamara Green told the “Today” show and The Philadelphia Inquirer that Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in the early 1970s, one of Mr. Cosby’s lawyers publicly branded the allegations “absolutely false,” while his aides approached another newspaper with “damaging information” about her, according to court documents.
Five years earlier, after an actress on Mr. Cosby’s TV series “Cosby” told the police that he had tried to put her hand down his sweatpants at his New York townhouse, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers threatened The National Enquirer with a $250 million defamation suit for publishing detailed comments about the incident by the woman’s relatives.
And when Mr. Cosby acknowledged an extramarital affair in a 1997 interview with Dan Rather, his agent telephoned the president of CBS Entertainment to demand that the segment not air on “60 Minutes” as planned. It did not, although CBS News said the decision had nothing to do with the call.
As accusations of sexual assault continue to mount against Mr. Cosby — more than two dozen women have gone public, the latest last Monday — the question arises as to why these stories never sparked a widespread outcry before. While many of the women say they never filed police complaints or went public because they feared damaging their reputations or careers, the aggressive legal and media strategy mounted by Mr. Cosby and his team may also have played a significant role.
Photo
Bill Cosby has used an aggressive legal team to fight accusations. Credit Matt Rourke/Associated Press
An examination of how the team has dealt with scandals over the past two decades and into this fall reveals an organized and expensive effort that involved quashing accusations as they emerged while raising questions about the accusers’ character and motives, both publicly and surreptitiously. And the team has never been shy about blasting the news media for engaging in a feeding frenzy even as the team made deals or slipped the news organizations information that would cast Mr. Cosby’s accusers in a negative light.
Playing hardball with people who make (and report on) incendiary claims is hardly a new tactic in the celebrity world. But given the volume and severity of the recent charges, with numerous women saying Mr. Cosby drugged and then sexually assaulted them, some legal and public relations practitioners question the wisdom of continuing to counterpunch.
“Sometimes in a case like this, less can be more,” said Benjamin Brafman, a criminal defense lawyer who represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn. “Attacking someone who is perceived to be a ‘victim’ can often be unproductive.”
“I would suggest,” Mr. Brafman added, “a softly spoken denial rather than an outspoken challenge to the integrity of the women now coming forward. Simply put, it may be better to say nothing than try and engage so many.”
The team behind Mr. Cosby’s longtime strategy has included John P. Schmitt, a lawyer from the New York law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler; Norman Brokaw, Mr. Cosby’s longtime agent at the William Morris Agency until late 2012; and Norman’s son David Brokaw, who has been Mr. Cosby’s publicist for 40 years. In addition, at several critical moments over the past few decades, Mr. Cosby has called on Martin D. Singer, an $850-an-hour lawyer with a reputation for playing rough on behalf of clients like Charlie Sheen and Arnold Schwarzenegger when they found themselves embroiled in controversy.
“He is a bulldog,” David R. Ginsburg, executive director of the entertainment, media and intellectual property law program at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, said of Mr. Singer.
Mr. Singer’s intensity was on full display in the first week of December after Judy Huth filed a civil suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that in 1974, when she was 15, Mr. Cosby plied her with drinks and forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion.
In court papers, Mr. Singer said Ms. Huth’s claim was “meritless” and nothing short of “a shakedown.” According to Mr. Singer, Ms. Huth and her lawyer had first demanded money to keep them from going public and Ms. Huth had tried unsuccessfully to sell the allegations to a tabloid 10 years earlier. (Ms. Huth’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)
It was not the first time that the word “shakedown” had been used to describe the motives of those coming forward with accusations of sexual abuse by Mr. Cosby.
Back in 2005, after Andrea Constand, a Temple University basketball manager, told the police in Pennsylvania that Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually abused her at his home in Pennsylvania the year before, a story appeared on “Celebrity Justice,” a TV show and website created by the founder of TMZ. “Sources connected with Bill Cosby,” the show reported, said that before Ms. Constand had approached the police, her mother had asked Mr. Cosby to “make things right with money.” The show went on to say that a Cosby representative had called this “a classic shakedown.”
Mr. Singer was the Cosby representative in question, another member of Mr. Cosby’s legal team said at a court hearing in 2005, and the next year Ms. Constand sued him for defamation. (Her lawyers denied the charge at the time.) That suit and Ms. Constand’s suit against Mr. Cosby were later consolidated and settled confidentially.
Mr. Singer declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Schmitt, who has been a lawyer for Mr. Cosby for more than 30 years, has also played a significant role — both behind the scenes and publicly — perhaps most notably in beating back the accusations of Autumn Jackson, who claimed to be Mr. Cosby’s daughter. When Ms. Jackson, in 1997, threatened to sell the story to the tabloid The Globe unless Mr. Cosby paid her $40 million, Mr. Schmitt agreed to wear a recording device as part of a law enforcement operation that charged her with extortion.
Photo
Martin D. Singer, a lawyer for Bill Cosby, at his Los Angeles office in 2011. Mr. Singer described the claims of one accuser as “a shakedown.” Credit Stephanie Diani for The New York Times
And after Ms. Jackson was found guilty, Mr. Schmitt took the unusual step of appearing on Geraldo Rivera’s CNBC show, “Rivera Live,” in 1997, and saying that Mr. Cosby would take a blood test to determine paternity.
Mr. Schmitt declined to comment for this article.
The Cosby team’s media strategy over the years has been a mix of hardball and playing ball, sometimes even with the same news organization.
Though the Cosby legal team threatened The National Enquirer in 2000 with a $250 million lawsuit, relations with that tabloid were decidedly more friendly five years later. After Ms. Constand, the Temple University employee, had gone public with her accusations against Mr. Cosby, The National Enquirer was pursuing a story about another woman, Beth Ferrier, who said Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted her in the mid-1980s. In exchange for not publishing its article about Ms. Ferrier, The Enquirer got an exclusive interview with Mr. Cosby (the headline: “Bill Cosby Ends His Silence: My Story!”), according to recently unsealed court documents.
Team Cosby would also try to apply pressure behind the scenes. In 1997, soon after Mr. Cosby’s son, Ennis, was murdered in Los Angeles, Mr. Cosby gave his first interview to Dan Rather of CBS News. For much of the two and a half hours of questioning, Mr. Rather focused on the crime and how Mr. Cosby was dealing with the grief. But he then gingerly asked about Ms. Jackson and the extortion charges, which had just become public days before. Mr. Cosby, surprisingly, acknowledged the affair with the mother and said that he could possibly be the father.
When the network aired the newsiest tidbits from Mr. Rather’s forthcoming “60 Minutes” segment on the morning and evening news programs, Norman Brokaw, Mr. Cosby’s William Morris agent and one of the most powerful people in television at the time, called Leslie Moonves, then the president of CBS Entertainment, to complain about the treatment of the network’s star.
Days later — after Mr. Rather had recorded his audio for “60 Minutes” — CBS News decided to scrap the segment. CBS executives denied any corporate interference, saying journalistic reasons had prompted the move. In the biography “Cosby,” Mark Whitaker writes that bad blood between Don Hewitt, the powerful executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Mr. Rather also drove the decision. Mr. Hewitt, who despised Mr. Rather, was furious that the newsiest excerpts had already been broadcast.
Mr. Moonves and Mr. Rather declined to comment.
During this recent spate of accusations, the Cosby team has suggested that the proliferation of accounts is itself a reason to distrust them and has pointed to apparent inconsistencies in some of the women’s stories. It has also systematically directed its ire at the news media, which it claims is engaged in a blind rush to judgment against a man who has never been convicted or charged. Mr. Singer threatened to sue Buzzfeed last month as it prepared an article about accusations by Janice Dickinson, a onetime supermodel, that Mr. Cosby drugged and raped her in 1982 in Lake Tahoe in California. “You proceed at your peril,” Mr. Singer wrote, saying that Ms. Dickinson had told a contradictory story in her memoir more than a decade earlier.
And in the past 10 days, he has sent angry letters to CNN and The Daily News, accusing them of abandoning any journalistic rigor in their coverage. “The media has consistently refused to look into or publish information about various women whose stories are contradicted by their own conduct or statement,” he wrote in his letter to The Daily News.
Mr. Singer isn’t the only one following the blame-the-media handbook. On Dec. 15, Mr. Cosby’s wife, Camille, finally broke her silence and joined the defense of her husband. In a statement released by David Brokaw, she said, “There appears to be no vetting of my husband’s accusers before stories are published or aired.”
She concluded: “None of us will ever want to be in the position of attacking the victim. But the question should be asked — who is the victim?”
But casting doubt on or aiming vitriol at the accusers can have consequences.
In 2005, when Mr. Cosby’s team denied Tamara Green’s accusations that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, she did not pursue legal action. But this month she was ready to fight back. Mr. Cosby’s team had greeted her renewed claim of sexual assault by saying it was “a 10-year discredited accusation that proved to be nothing at the time, and is still nothing.” On Dec. 10, Ms. Green filed a defamation suit against Mr. Cosby, saying the denials basically branded her a liar.
“I want it put to a jury,” Ms. Green said earlier this month. “I want it ended, finally. I want my name restored.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/a...on®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
In 2005, when Tamara Green told the “Today” show and The Philadelphia Inquirer that Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in the early 1970s, one of Mr. Cosby’s lawyers publicly branded the allegations “absolutely false,” while his aides approached another newspaper with “damaging information” about her, according to court documents.
Five years earlier, after an actress on Mr. Cosby’s TV series “Cosby” told the police that he had tried to put her hand down his sweatpants at his New York townhouse, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers threatened The National Enquirer with a $250 million defamation suit for publishing detailed comments about the incident by the woman’s relatives.
And when Mr. Cosby acknowledged an extramarital affair in a 1997 interview with Dan Rather, his agent telephoned the president of CBS Entertainment to demand that the segment not air on “60 Minutes” as planned. It did not, although CBS News said the decision had nothing to do with the call.
As accusations of sexual assault continue to mount against Mr. Cosby — more than two dozen women have gone public, the latest last Monday — the question arises as to why these stories never sparked a widespread outcry before. While many of the women say they never filed police complaints or went public because they feared damaging their reputations or careers, the aggressive legal and media strategy mounted by Mr. Cosby and his team may also have played a significant role.
Photo
Bill Cosby has used an aggressive legal team to fight accusations. Credit Matt Rourke/Associated Press
An examination of how the team has dealt with scandals over the past two decades and into this fall reveals an organized and expensive effort that involved quashing accusations as they emerged while raising questions about the accusers’ character and motives, both publicly and surreptitiously. And the team has never been shy about blasting the news media for engaging in a feeding frenzy even as the team made deals or slipped the news organizations information that would cast Mr. Cosby’s accusers in a negative light.
Playing hardball with people who make (and report on) incendiary claims is hardly a new tactic in the celebrity world. But given the volume and severity of the recent charges, with numerous women saying Mr. Cosby drugged and then sexually assaulted them, some legal and public relations practitioners question the wisdom of continuing to counterpunch.
“Sometimes in a case like this, less can be more,” said Benjamin Brafman, a criminal defense lawyer who represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn. “Attacking someone who is perceived to be a ‘victim’ can often be unproductive.”
“I would suggest,” Mr. Brafman added, “a softly spoken denial rather than an outspoken challenge to the integrity of the women now coming forward. Simply put, it may be better to say nothing than try and engage so many.”
The team behind Mr. Cosby’s longtime strategy has included John P. Schmitt, a lawyer from the New York law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler; Norman Brokaw, Mr. Cosby’s longtime agent at the William Morris Agency until late 2012; and Norman’s son David Brokaw, who has been Mr. Cosby’s publicist for 40 years. In addition, at several critical moments over the past few decades, Mr. Cosby has called on Martin D. Singer, an $850-an-hour lawyer with a reputation for playing rough on behalf of clients like Charlie Sheen and Arnold Schwarzenegger when they found themselves embroiled in controversy.
“He is a bulldog,” David R. Ginsburg, executive director of the entertainment, media and intellectual property law program at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, said of Mr. Singer.
Mr. Singer’s intensity was on full display in the first week of December after Judy Huth filed a civil suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that in 1974, when she was 15, Mr. Cosby plied her with drinks and forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion.
In court papers, Mr. Singer said Ms. Huth’s claim was “meritless” and nothing short of “a shakedown.” According to Mr. Singer, Ms. Huth and her lawyer had first demanded money to keep them from going public and Ms. Huth had tried unsuccessfully to sell the allegations to a tabloid 10 years earlier. (Ms. Huth’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)
It was not the first time that the word “shakedown” had been used to describe the motives of those coming forward with accusations of sexual abuse by Mr. Cosby.
Back in 2005, after Andrea Constand, a Temple University basketball manager, told the police in Pennsylvania that Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually abused her at his home in Pennsylvania the year before, a story appeared on “Celebrity Justice,” a TV show and website created by the founder of TMZ. “Sources connected with Bill Cosby,” the show reported, said that before Ms. Constand had approached the police, her mother had asked Mr. Cosby to “make things right with money.” The show went on to say that a Cosby representative had called this “a classic shakedown.”
Mr. Singer was the Cosby representative in question, another member of Mr. Cosby’s legal team said at a court hearing in 2005, and the next year Ms. Constand sued him for defamation. (Her lawyers denied the charge at the time.) That suit and Ms. Constand’s suit against Mr. Cosby were later consolidated and settled confidentially.
Mr. Singer declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Schmitt, who has been a lawyer for Mr. Cosby for more than 30 years, has also played a significant role — both behind the scenes and publicly — perhaps most notably in beating back the accusations of Autumn Jackson, who claimed to be Mr. Cosby’s daughter. When Ms. Jackson, in 1997, threatened to sell the story to the tabloid The Globe unless Mr. Cosby paid her $40 million, Mr. Schmitt agreed to wear a recording device as part of a law enforcement operation that charged her with extortion.
Photo
Martin D. Singer, a lawyer for Bill Cosby, at his Los Angeles office in 2011. Mr. Singer described the claims of one accuser as “a shakedown.” Credit Stephanie Diani for The New York Times
And after Ms. Jackson was found guilty, Mr. Schmitt took the unusual step of appearing on Geraldo Rivera’s CNBC show, “Rivera Live,” in 1997, and saying that Mr. Cosby would take a blood test to determine paternity.
Mr. Schmitt declined to comment for this article.
The Cosby team’s media strategy over the years has been a mix of hardball and playing ball, sometimes even with the same news organization.
Though the Cosby legal team threatened The National Enquirer in 2000 with a $250 million lawsuit, relations with that tabloid were decidedly more friendly five years later. After Ms. Constand, the Temple University employee, had gone public with her accusations against Mr. Cosby, The National Enquirer was pursuing a story about another woman, Beth Ferrier, who said Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted her in the mid-1980s. In exchange for not publishing its article about Ms. Ferrier, The Enquirer got an exclusive interview with Mr. Cosby (the headline: “Bill Cosby Ends His Silence: My Story!”), according to recently unsealed court documents.
Team Cosby would also try to apply pressure behind the scenes. In 1997, soon after Mr. Cosby’s son, Ennis, was murdered in Los Angeles, Mr. Cosby gave his first interview to Dan Rather of CBS News. For much of the two and a half hours of questioning, Mr. Rather focused on the crime and how Mr. Cosby was dealing with the grief. But he then gingerly asked about Ms. Jackson and the extortion charges, which had just become public days before. Mr. Cosby, surprisingly, acknowledged the affair with the mother and said that he could possibly be the father.
When the network aired the newsiest tidbits from Mr. Rather’s forthcoming “60 Minutes” segment on the morning and evening news programs, Norman Brokaw, Mr. Cosby’s William Morris agent and one of the most powerful people in television at the time, called Leslie Moonves, then the president of CBS Entertainment, to complain about the treatment of the network’s star.
Days later — after Mr. Rather had recorded his audio for “60 Minutes” — CBS News decided to scrap the segment. CBS executives denied any corporate interference, saying journalistic reasons had prompted the move. In the biography “Cosby,” Mark Whitaker writes that bad blood between Don Hewitt, the powerful executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Mr. Rather also drove the decision. Mr. Hewitt, who despised Mr. Rather, was furious that the newsiest excerpts had already been broadcast.
Mr. Moonves and Mr. Rather declined to comment.
During this recent spate of accusations, the Cosby team has suggested that the proliferation of accounts is itself a reason to distrust them and has pointed to apparent inconsistencies in some of the women’s stories. It has also systematically directed its ire at the news media, which it claims is engaged in a blind rush to judgment against a man who has never been convicted or charged. Mr. Singer threatened to sue Buzzfeed last month as it prepared an article about accusations by Janice Dickinson, a onetime supermodel, that Mr. Cosby drugged and raped her in 1982 in Lake Tahoe in California. “You proceed at your peril,” Mr. Singer wrote, saying that Ms. Dickinson had told a contradictory story in her memoir more than a decade earlier.
And in the past 10 days, he has sent angry letters to CNN and The Daily News, accusing them of abandoning any journalistic rigor in their coverage. “The media has consistently refused to look into or publish information about various women whose stories are contradicted by their own conduct or statement,” he wrote in his letter to The Daily News.
Mr. Singer isn’t the only one following the blame-the-media handbook. On Dec. 15, Mr. Cosby’s wife, Camille, finally broke her silence and joined the defense of her husband. In a statement released by David Brokaw, she said, “There appears to be no vetting of my husband’s accusers before stories are published or aired.”
She concluded: “None of us will ever want to be in the position of attacking the victim. But the question should be asked — who is the victim?”
But casting doubt on or aiming vitriol at the accusers can have consequences.
In 2005, when Mr. Cosby’s team denied Tamara Green’s accusations that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, she did not pursue legal action. But this month she was ready to fight back. Mr. Cosby’s team had greeted her renewed claim of sexual assault by saying it was “a 10-year discredited accusation that proved to be nothing at the time, and is still nothing.” On Dec. 10, Ms. Green filed a defamation suit against Mr. Cosby, saying the denials basically branded her a liar.
“I want it put to a jury,” Ms. Green said earlier this month. “I want it ended, finally. I want my name restored.”
Cosby's latest accuser:
{ahem} she appeared at court wearing provocative attire and has been employed as a lap dancer - some may question her credibility and motivation but all that remains to be seen
{ahem} she appeared at court wearing provocative attire and has been employed as a lap dancer - some may question her credibility and motivation but all that remains to be seen
{ahem} So the ****ty ways you see in her are a result of being molested by a gentle one who maybe liked to put his mouth on her privates over the assrape that you might call 'molestation' or was she just born that way. Being nice looking makes you a target btw and from the camera angle she might be quite short which only enhances her child-like appearances. Ask her if any of her customers want to take her home and dress her up to look as young as she can.
Make a guy want to stay in school forever, same grade too, if that was your teacher.
Make a guy want to stay in school forever, same grade too, if that was your teacher.
Dressed like that, she had it coming.Cosby's latest accuser:
{ahem} she appeared at court wearing provocative attire and has been employed as a lap dancer - some may question her credibility and motivation but all that remains to be seen
Unless somebody dressed her like that. How's the weather in DC this morning, all the boys wearing two layers of clothes?
I wonder if this pic was cropped in some way. When I saw a tv interview of her last night she was showing far more cleavage than than foto shows. And that's the way she walked into the court room.
Supposedly the latest incident took place six years ago. She appeared in court with that provocative outfit and you wonder why her lawyer didn't tell her to dress more modestly in order to gain some measure of credibility. Perhaps it's all a publicity stunt.
Don't know and will have to await the subsequent details as they are disclosed ....
Want to see her tip sheet from work?
The Judge would do a face-palm if the defendant licked his lips. Her Lawyer should have her dress like she was when 'the alleged incident' took place.
interesting turn of events here:
'I felt like a real-life blow up doll': Two more sexual assault accusations brought against Bill Cosby, including one in Canada where there is no statute of limitations | Daily Mail Online
'I felt like a real-life blow up doll': Two more sexual assault accusations brought against Bill Cosby, including one in Canada where there is no statute of limitations
Former models Linda Brown and Lisa-Lotte Lublin have come forward accusing Cosby of drugging them
Brown claimed she woke up naked in Cosby's hotel room in Toronto in 1969 after he offered her a soft drink that made her black out
Lublin accused the star of The Cosby Show of luring her into his room in Las Vegas under the guise of an audition in 1989
Both women are represented by Gloria Allred, whose client list includes seven other Cosby accusers
Cosby, 77, denies all allegations of sexual assaults
He postponed Thursday's show in California and canceled February 21 performance in Pittsburgh
'I felt like a real-life blow up doll': Two more sexual assault accusations brought against Bill Cosby, including one in Canada where there is no statute of limitations | Daily Mail Online
'I felt like a real-life blow up doll': Two more sexual assault accusations brought against Bill Cosby, including one in Canada where there is no statute of limitations
Former models Linda Brown and Lisa-Lotte Lublin have come forward accusing Cosby of drugging them
Brown claimed she woke up naked in Cosby's hotel room in Toronto in 1969 after he offered her a soft drink that made her black out
Lublin accused the star of The Cosby Show of luring her into his room in Las Vegas under the guise of an audition in 1989
Both women are represented by Gloria Allred, whose client list includes seven other Cosby accusers
Cosby, 77, denies all allegations of sexual assaults
He postponed Thursday's show in California and canceled February 21 performance in Pittsburgh
Bill Cosby statue removed at Disney's Hollywood Studios after sedatives-before-sex admission
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 08:20 AM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 11:31 AM EDT
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Walt Disney World officials say a bronze statue of Bill Cosby is being removed from the Hollywood Studios theme park.
Local news outlets report the statue was being removed after the park closed Tuesday night. Disney offered no other comment.
The removal of the statute at Disney's Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame Plaza came after court documents unsealed on Monday revealed that Cosby testified in 2005 that he'd obtained Quaaludes with the intent of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with.
The 77-year-old Cosby hasn't commented on the documents, which were secret for a decade until Monday, after The Associated Press went to court to get them released. He has never been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied sexual assault allegations.
A bust of actor and comedian Bill Cosby at Hollywood Studios theme park in Orlando. (AP files/Tony Winton)
Bill Cosby statue removed at Disney's Hollywood Studios after sedatives-before-s
Bill Cosby sex case: Toronto woman speaks to Sun
By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun First posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 06:10 AM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 08:58 AM EDT
While she still backs efforts to support victims of sexual assault, Toronto's Andrea Constand says she has moved on from her heavy ordeal involving Bill Cosby.
"It doesn't define me," Constand cordially told me Tuesday. "I don't want to talk about Cosby. It's in the past. I have a whole other life and I am happy."
The former Temple University employee alleged Cosby sexually assaulted her--one of the first of many women to make highly publicized accusations against the comedian.
The shocking release of a once-sealed court document that says Cosby admitted in 2005 to giving her drugs shook up Constand's world once again.
The former director of operations for the women's basketball team at Philadelphia's Temple University became friends with the entertainment icon in 2002, when she was in her late 20s.
Cosby, who studied physical education at Temple in the 1960s and served on its board of trustees for decades until last year, would often attend games.
According to court filings, Constand attended parties and private dinners at Cosby's Philadelphia home.
A court document brought to light by The Philadelphia Inquirer says Cosby
acknowledged under oath that he supplied Quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman in Las Vegas in the 1970s and told the court he had given Constand "three half-pills of Benadryl."
The Inquirer reported Constand's claim was whatever the "blue" pills were, they made her "semiconscious."
She alleged Cosby touched her breasts and crotch and put her hand on his *****.
Constand's allegations were never tested in criminal court and Cosby has never faced charges.
Constand's civil case against Cosby was settled out of court.
Court documents were sealed for a decade.
Despite objections from Cosby's lawyers, portions of the testimony from that case, requested by The Inquirer, have now been made public.
Constand has never spoken to media about the matter.
"It seems a lot of people are calling," Constand acknowledged.
She may be the most sought-after interview in the Cosby circus.
The details that came out of her lawsuit may have also changed the whole game for Cosby since he did make some admissions.
All Constand has done publicly since the news came to light Monday was post two tweets--one saying "Yes" and the other "Sir."
Although she didn't confirm or deny her tweets were in response to the news from the U.S., those tweets might be the extent of what she does say.
"Respectfully, I don't talk about it and I don't plan on talking about it," she told me. "It's a force that is unfolding all on its own."
So what did the woman do on the day after it was reported?
She went to work.
She spent the day helping people and said she never hesitated for a moment.
There was no running and hiding for the woman who reported the alleged attack to Durham Regional Police in 2004.
She was at the Toronto physiotherapy clinic where she works with a full slate of appointments.
"I am a registered massage therapist," she said proudly, adding that she never once considered cancelling her schedule despite the glare of the media.
"I am a health-care worker."
Helping people with pain and injuries is her life.
A former basketball player, she understands the importance of what she does.
She said she also believes the public understands her dilemma.
"People get the picture," Constand said. "It's uncomfortable for me."
Still, she admitted she realizes a media storm is hovering over her.
She understands there is interest in her story.
"I am aware, of course. I know you have to do a story," she said. "I am not saying anything and I am not doing anything. The forces are all in play."
That said, she is very interested in supporting women who have been victims of sexual assault and has re-tweeted messages about the cause.
"I support (Premier) Kathleen Wynne," she said. "Thank God we are implementing consent and touching into our educational system starting in third, fourth and fifth grades-- knowing your boundaries and to respect space. I think it's good that Kathleen Wynne is doing that."
Our conversation wasn't all heavy and serious.
She joked around with photographer Dave Thomas and me.
"I didn't want to be rude," she said of why she came out to speak with us. "But there is really not much I can say."
Constand isn't someone who spends a lot of time focused on what is going on in Cosby's crumbling world, but instead is trying to eke out her own existence--one in which she helps people.
With frizzy hair, tattoos on her arms and an easygoing personality, she made a real impression on us.
She could have easily avoided us or flipped us off, but instead treated us very well.
My phone rang two hours later and it solidified my impression of her.
"I just wanted to apologize," Constand told me. "I know I did not give you much of a story and yet there is so much more to say."
She didn't indicate when it will be time to "sit down and talk," but there may be a day down the road.
Just not now.
Bill Cosby sex case: Toronto woman speaks to Sun | EXCLUSIVE | Toronto & GTA | N
when I comes to rape he doesn't discriminate between genders. :shock:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 08:20 AM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 11:31 AM EDT
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Walt Disney World officials say a bronze statue of Bill Cosby is being removed from the Hollywood Studios theme park.
Local news outlets report the statue was being removed after the park closed Tuesday night. Disney offered no other comment.
The removal of the statute at Disney's Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame Plaza came after court documents unsealed on Monday revealed that Cosby testified in 2005 that he'd obtained Quaaludes with the intent of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with.
The 77-year-old Cosby hasn't commented on the documents, which were secret for a decade until Monday, after The Associated Press went to court to get them released. He has never been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied sexual assault allegations.
A bust of actor and comedian Bill Cosby at Hollywood Studios theme park in Orlando. (AP files/Tony Winton)
Bill Cosby statue removed at Disney's Hollywood Studios after sedatives-before-s
Bill Cosby sex case: Toronto woman speaks to Sun
By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun First posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 06:10 AM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 08:58 AM EDT
While she still backs efforts to support victims of sexual assault, Toronto's Andrea Constand says she has moved on from her heavy ordeal involving Bill Cosby.
"It doesn't define me," Constand cordially told me Tuesday. "I don't want to talk about Cosby. It's in the past. I have a whole other life and I am happy."
The former Temple University employee alleged Cosby sexually assaulted her--one of the first of many women to make highly publicized accusations against the comedian.
The shocking release of a once-sealed court document that says Cosby admitted in 2005 to giving her drugs shook up Constand's world once again.
The former director of operations for the women's basketball team at Philadelphia's Temple University became friends with the entertainment icon in 2002, when she was in her late 20s.
Cosby, who studied physical education at Temple in the 1960s and served on its board of trustees for decades until last year, would often attend games.
According to court filings, Constand attended parties and private dinners at Cosby's Philadelphia home.
A court document brought to light by The Philadelphia Inquirer says Cosby
acknowledged under oath that he supplied Quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman in Las Vegas in the 1970s and told the court he had given Constand "three half-pills of Benadryl."
The Inquirer reported Constand's claim was whatever the "blue" pills were, they made her "semiconscious."
She alleged Cosby touched her breasts and crotch and put her hand on his *****.
Constand's allegations were never tested in criminal court and Cosby has never faced charges.
Constand's civil case against Cosby was settled out of court.
Court documents were sealed for a decade.
Despite objections from Cosby's lawyers, portions of the testimony from that case, requested by The Inquirer, have now been made public.
Constand has never spoken to media about the matter.
"It seems a lot of people are calling," Constand acknowledged.
She may be the most sought-after interview in the Cosby circus.
The details that came out of her lawsuit may have also changed the whole game for Cosby since he did make some admissions.
All Constand has done publicly since the news came to light Monday was post two tweets--one saying "Yes" and the other "Sir."
Although she didn't confirm or deny her tweets were in response to the news from the U.S., those tweets might be the extent of what she does say.
"Respectfully, I don't talk about it and I don't plan on talking about it," she told me. "It's a force that is unfolding all on its own."
So what did the woman do on the day after it was reported?
She went to work.
She spent the day helping people and said she never hesitated for a moment.
There was no running and hiding for the woman who reported the alleged attack to Durham Regional Police in 2004.
She was at the Toronto physiotherapy clinic where she works with a full slate of appointments.
"I am a registered massage therapist," she said proudly, adding that she never once considered cancelling her schedule despite the glare of the media.
"I am a health-care worker."
Helping people with pain and injuries is her life.
A former basketball player, she understands the importance of what she does.
She said she also believes the public understands her dilemma.
"People get the picture," Constand said. "It's uncomfortable for me."
Still, she admitted she realizes a media storm is hovering over her.
She understands there is interest in her story.
"I am aware, of course. I know you have to do a story," she said. "I am not saying anything and I am not doing anything. The forces are all in play."
That said, she is very interested in supporting women who have been victims of sexual assault and has re-tweeted messages about the cause.
"I support (Premier) Kathleen Wynne," she said. "Thank God we are implementing consent and touching into our educational system starting in third, fourth and fifth grades-- knowing your boundaries and to respect space. I think it's good that Kathleen Wynne is doing that."
Our conversation wasn't all heavy and serious.
She joked around with photographer Dave Thomas and me.
"I didn't want to be rude," she said of why she came out to speak with us. "But there is really not much I can say."
Constand isn't someone who spends a lot of time focused on what is going on in Cosby's crumbling world, but instead is trying to eke out her own existence--one in which she helps people.
With frizzy hair, tattoos on her arms and an easygoing personality, she made a real impression on us.
She could have easily avoided us or flipped us off, but instead treated us very well.
My phone rang two hours later and it solidified my impression of her.
"I just wanted to apologize," Constand told me. "I know I did not give you much of a story and yet there is so much more to say."
She didn't indicate when it will be time to "sit down and talk," but there may be a day down the road.
Just not now.
Bill Cosby sex case: Toronto woman speaks to Sun | EXCLUSIVE | Toronto & GTA | N
when I comes to rape he doesn't discriminate between genders. :shock:
What the fukk is that?? It would be lucky if somebody raped it..
The nice thing about the public is they have a short attention span..
The accusations will eventually disappear, and people will see them for what they are - a bunch of ugly old women trying to soak a rich star for their next boob job or facelift.
Without doubt that is the crudest reply posted in awhile. The accusations won't disappear since he admits to drugging the women, in court, and is awaiting the outcome.
What the clod did is now on record and it will not go away. It is pretty bad when more than half of the worlds population cannot accept a drink of any sort from another member of the same species without a disastrous outcome. Oh, well,that half does eventually learn. I am sure they will take their own form of revenge and it will be the sort that will extract punishment without possibility of a backlash.
As for those ugly old women.......what exactly do you think the average woman sees looking at that man?? Of course many women make excuses for the average ugly man. Like,,,, he is nice, a good person, very amusing, caring and generous . Care to elucidate how you particularly think an ugly old woman can justify their existence?? What a waste of space some people can be.....right!! What a disgusting outlook!!
Maybe people should be listening to them. If it was one or two or even three, it might be dismissed as "sour grapes", a Hollywood idol doesn't necessarily make a hero. If I was innocent and in his boots a lot of women would have to put their money where their mouth is.
Yawn. The 60's was a time when everyone experimented with drugs..
...and seriously, 30 years later they come forward. If it was such a tragedy, they would have filed a police report back then.. now 30 years later, they need money, that is when the sharks circle.
If you take a look at the accusers, they need to money because they are washed up has-beens.
FFS look at her, she has had so much plastic surgery.. another washed up old bag hoping to hold on the fame.
